Don't expect the health industry to share huge bags of swag with California for its investment in stem cell research.
At least that was one opinion in a piece by reporter Terri Somers of the San Diego Union Tribune Sunday.
She noted that the arguments for Prop. 71 had predicted a big economic bonus for the state, but added that "money is unlikely to materialize, at least any time soon, according to those now charged with the task of creating policy for the institute."
"The idea that any new research today could result in rewards that provide an immediate benefit to California is misguided," Somers quoted Ginger Graham, chief executive of Amylin Pharmaceuticals in San Diego as saying.
"Graham is a member of a task force with the California Council for Science and Technology, a group of academics, business executives and lawyers that the state Legislature has asked to make recommendations for handling the rights to any discoveries that result from research funded through Prop. 71."
Somers also quoted Roger Noll, a Stanford economist on the task force. He "pointed to a paper he wrote about California's intellectual property issues as an example of the challenge the state faces. In 2000, the University of California system spent almost $2 billion on research but received only $74 million in licensing, Noll found.
"'These facts should give pause to state officials who see a potential financial bonanza in the (intellectual property) arising from state-sponsored (embryonic stem cell) research," Noll wrote in the paper.
"'The best advice . . . is not to try to be very innovative in creating agencies and policies to make grants and oversee intellectual property rights,'" he said. "'These programs will not succeed if they ask grant recipients to behave a great deal differently than they are required to behave from other, much larger sources of funds.'"
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